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Category: Space

From Seattle, you’re probably not going to see Venus as it creeps across the surface of the sun today. The rare solar even won’t be repeated until 2117, but that’s just too bad. Blame our famous June gloom.

So, your best bet is to watch the planet pass in front of the sun online. It’s better that way, right? Easier to have snacks on-hand for the seven hour planet-watching marathon if you’re inside at your computer.

Brace for impact, Earth. NASA astronomers say they’re certain the Milky Way is destine to collide with the (relatively) nearby Andromeda galaxy due to a mutually overwhelming gravitational pull.

Two things you should know before reading the rest of this story: First of all, this will reportedly happen about 4 billion years from now, so you probably have more urgent threats to worry about. And secondly, astronomers say the collision will greatly change the Milky Way, but our solar system should be more or less fine.

The first lunar eclipse of the year will happen June 4 when the moon will be partially obscured by the Earth’s shadow, as viewed from North America. (Yep, pretty much all of North America — including Seattle. Clouds permitting.)

You’ll have to get up pretty early to see it, or go to bed pretty late. But I hear it’ll be worth every minute of sleep you lose.

The idea that there’s a giant planet orbiting the sun just past Pluto isn’t anything new; astronomers have been searching for a phantom planet for centuries. But now a researcher from the National Observatory of Brazil says he has new evidence that there’s a so-called Planet X lurking at the edges of our solar system.

Astronomer Rodney Gomes says he’s found evidence of the hulking world in the orbits of of small bodies such as the dwarf planet Sedna, which travels an oddly elongated path past Pluto. His theory is that a planet three times the size of Earth is distorting the orbits of those bodies from the far reaches of the solar system.

The planet would be too far away to impact the orbits of most objects in the solar system, but it would have considerable pull with objects on the icy edges of the system.

If you weren’t one of the devoted few who drove to Sequim to see the solar eclipse Sunday, you you shouldn’t be too bummed out. You’ll get another chance to witness an even rarer solar moment next Month, and this one will be visible from Seattle. (Clouds permitting, of course.)

Venus will pass in front of the sun on June 5, meaning sky watchers will see a black dot move across the sun. This is only the seventh time Venus has made this trek since the telescope was invented — and it won’t happen again for 105 years.

Four white dwarf stars detected by the Hubble Space Telescope are giving researchers an ominous peek into the fate of the Earth.

It goes something like this: Sure is getting warm around here. Whoa, do you feel destabilized? BOOM.

OK, it’s a little more complicated than that. The white dwarfs were scrutinized by astrophysicists at the University of Warwick, who determined that most of the dust and debris being sucked into the stars’ gravitational pull was comprised of material also found in Earth’s building blocks